The Objectives of the study The Benefits of the Study Related Research

xxi

C. The Objectives of the study

Based on the problem statement, the objectives of this research are: 1. To identify whether Acting Play Scripts technique can improve students’ speaking skill. 2. To know to what extent Acting Play Scripts technique improve students’ speaking skill. 3. To describe class situation when Acting Play Scripts technique is implemented in speaking class.

D. The Benefits of the Study

1. For Students: a. To create students skill in speaking in daily life. b. To provide revelation of learning English and practice for their speaking in meaningful way. c. To motivate students to practice speaking English fluently. d. To create an interesting and comforting atmosphere in the classroom. e. To increase students motivation to master English Speaking skill. 2. For teacher as a researcher: a. To make create joyful learning in speaking class b. To enlarge the mind set of teaching speaking in the teaching learning process. xxii 3. For other teachers: a. As a reference for those who want to conduct a research in English teaching process. b. As an input of knowledge in English teaching process. 4. For English Education Department: To utilize the result of the study on a scope of a similar research. xxiii CHAPTER II REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE This chapter consists of the following sections: the theoretical description and action hypothesis. Meanwhile, the theoretical description consists of the explanation of speaking skill, drama, and communicative language teaching. Here the writer tries to elaborate the further discussion of each section above.

A. The Nature of Speaking 1. The Meaning of Speaking Skill

Speaking is a speech production that becomes a part of our daily activities. Most of speaking activities are in the form of face-to-face dialogue; therefore speaking involves interaction Thornburry, 2005: 8. Spoken English has different characteristics with the written form. Harmer 1998: 49 states saveral characteristics of English as spoken language, as follows: first, people speak in incomplete sentence. Second, speakers must rrepeat what each other says. Third, speakers tend to apply contractions. Another characteristic in spoken language is paralinguistic feature Harmer, 1998: 49. Paralinguistic feature refers to non-linguistic ways in which speech can be affected. These include the tone, expression, and body language. Harmer 1991: 46 states that when people are engaged in talking to each other, they are doing so for good reasons: xxiv a. They want to say something When people want to speak, it means that there is a definite decision to address other people. People need to speak, otherwise they will keep silent. b. They have some communicative purpose Speakers say things because they want something to happen as a result of what they say, such as giving some information or expressing pleasure. The important thing is the message they wish to convey and the effect they want it to have. c. They select from their language store Speakers have an infinite capacity to create new sentences. In order to achievethis communicative purposes they will select from the “store” of language theypossess. That is the language that they think appropriate for this purpose. The process of speaking involves three stages namely conceptualization, formulation, and articulation Thornburry, 2005: 9. Formulation refers to the mapping of the idea in the mind. When the idea has been mapped out, then it is formulated. Formulation involves the making of strategic choices at the level of discourse, syntax, and vocabulary. What has formulated is then articulated. Articulation involves the use of the organ of speech to produce sounds. The processes of articulation are engaged by forming vowels and consonants and then combined into phonemes Thornburry, 2005: 5. xxv Thornburry 2005: 4 proposes basic knowledge that enabling speech in a second language, they are: a. A core grammar b. a core vocabulary of at least 1000 high frequency items c. some common discourse markers d. a core “phrase book” of multi-word units chunks e. formulaic ways of performing common speech acts, such as requesting or inviting. f. mastery of those features of pronunciation that inhabit intelligibility. Harmer 1991: 50 suggests three stages in teaching speaking, namely introducing new language, practice, and communictive activities. a. Introducing new language Intoducing stage is often called presentation. Teacher often works with controlled technique, such as asking students to repeat and perform in drills. Teacher usually insists in accuracy. There is correction on students’ mistakes. Drilling abbondoned as soon as possible because it is very important in helping students to assimilate with the new language and enabling them to produce new language for the first time. b. practice During practice time the teacher may intervene slightly to help guide and point out inaccuracy. xxvi c. communicative activities Communicative activities are those which exhibit the characteristics at the communicative end of the lesson. Students are involved in activities that give them both the desire to communicate and a purpose which involve them in a varied use of language. Another opinion about speaking is stated by Widdowson 1978: 58. He says that speaking has two meanings. First, it refers to the manner in which language is manifested. Second, it refers to the manner in which language is realized as communication. Mackey 2007: 13 states that speaking is oral expression that involves not only the use of the right patterns of rhythm and intonation but also right order to convey the right meaning. In addition, Nunan 1991: 390 states that mastering the art of speaking is the single most important aspect of learning a second or foreign language and success is measured in term of the ability to carry out a conversation in the language.

2. Types of Classroom Speaking Skill

According to Brown 1994: 266, there are six types of speaking skill that the students are expected to carry out in the classroom. In this section, the six types of speaking skill are presented as follows: a. Imitative In this type of performance, the students are asked to repeat or imitate the teachers’ speech or speech of tape recorder. Imitation of this kind is carried out xxvii not for the purpose of meaningful interaction, but for focusing on some particular elements of language form. In other words, this activity focuses more on form rather than on meaning. Such activity is also called “drilling”. Drills offer students an opportunity to listen and to orally repeat certain strings of language that may pose some linguistic difficulties- either phonological or grammatical. They offer limited practice through repetition. Furthermore, Brown says that drills can help to establish certain psychomotor pattern and to associate selected grammatical forms with their appropriate context. Brown’s statement above can be interpreted that drilling is still important and for teaching speaking, mainly pronunciation and intonation as long as it is not overused and students know why they are doing the drill. b. Intensive In this type of skill, students deal with their linguistic difficulties-either phonological or grammatical aspect of language. Brown states that intensive speaking goes one step beyond imitative to include any speaking performance that is designed to practice some phonological or grammatical aspects of language. Intensive speaking can be in form of self-initiated or it can be part of some pair work activity, where learners are ‘going over’ certain forms of language. c. Responsive In this type, students may give short replies to teacher or even students have an initiative for asking questions or comments. Students’ responses are xxviii usually sufficient and do not extend into dialogues. However, such speech can be meaningful and authentic. d. Transactional dialogue Here, students are involved in exchanging specific information with their conversational partners. This activity is carried out for the purpose of conveying or exchanging specific information. Brown 1994: 266 says that transactional language is an extended form of responsive language. It may have more of a negotiate nature than merely responsive speech. e. Interpersonal dialogue The students actively participate in the authentic give and take of communicative interchange. This type of activity is carried out more for the purpose of maintaining social relationships than for the transmission of facts and information. It deals with the factors of casual register, colloquial language, emotionally charged language, slang, ellipsis, sarcasm, and a covert agenda. f. Extensive monologue The students are called on to give extended monologues in the form of oral reports, summaries, or perhaps short speeches. This skill is used to develop students’ global oral ability of producing spoken language which is more formal deliberative.

3. Characteristics of Successful Speaking Activity

xxix Ur 1996: 121 identifies four problems that may hamper the successful of speaking class as follows: a. Inhibition. Speaking activities require real context and exposure to an audience. This often makes students inhabited in speaking in front of others. Students may be worried or afraid of making mistakes and being humiliated. b. Nothing to say Students often cannot think and find any words to say even though they may have some vocabularies and knowledge about the topics. c. Low or uneven participation Speaking class may face this problem, especially in big classes. Students must wait for their turn to speak and before they have chance to speak, the time is over. A talkative or smart student who dominates the speaking will make this problem worse. d. Mother tongue use The use of native language during speaking activities will hamper the use of the target language. Chaney 1998: 13 defines that speaking as the “process of building and sharing meaning through the use of verbal and non-verbal symbol in variety context”. Speaking involves three areas of knowledge: pronunciation, grammar, xxx and vocabulary. Speaking is also the ability to use the right words in the right order with the right pronunciation. From the definitions above, it can be concluded that speaking is ability to say something which involves the ability in using the words in the correct order, correct pronunciation, right grammatical form, and meaningful context fluency and choosing the appropriate words or vocabularies in the process of interpreting and negotiating meaning in conveying messages to establish and maintain social relationship. To create a successful speaking class and to solve the problems mentioned above, Ur 1996: 121-122 suggests the teacher to use activities as the following: a. Use group work In line with Ur’s opinion, Brown 2000: 178 states that group work can prompt interactive language, offer a comfortable affective climate, promote students responsibility and a move toward individualizing instruction. b. Base the activity on easy language Teachers should recognize the level of the students’ language and provide an easy activity to recall and produce. c. Make a careful choice of topic and task to stimulate interest Teachers should choose an interesting topic and task for the students in order to motivate their interest in the activity provided. d. Give some instructions or trainings in discussion skills. xxxi Giving instruction or training on how discussion should be performed will ensure that the activities work well. There should be clear rules how discussion will be done and each student is given specific roles to get involved in it. e. Keep students speaking in the target language. Teachers should monitor the students in speaking class to make sure they speak well at their best ability. To help teachers do this job, they can ask some students to monitor the others in turn. Kayi 2006 suggests some considerations for English language teachers while teaching speaking: a. Provide maximum opportunity to students to speak the target language by providing a rich environment that contains collaborative work, authentic materials, and shared knowledge. b. Try to involve each student in every speaking activity; for this aim, practice different ways of students’ participation. c. Reduce teacher speaking time in class while increasing students speaking time. Step back and observe students. d. Indicate positive signs when commenting on a students’ response. e. Ask eliciting questions such as “What do you mean? How did you reach that conclusion?” In order to prompt students to speak more. f. Provide written feedback. xxxii g. Do not correct students’ mistakes in pronunciation very often while they are speaking. Correction should not distract students from his or her speech. h. Involve speaking activities not only in class but also out of class; contact parents and other people who can help. i. Circulate around classroom to ensure that students are on the right track and see whether they need your help while they work in groups or pairs. j. Provide the vocabulary beforehand that students need in speaking activities. k. Diagnose problems faced by students who have difficulty in expressing themselves in the target language and provide more opportunities to practice the spoken language. Ur 1999: 120 says that the characteristics of a successful speaking activity are as follows: a. Learners talk a lot The students talk as much as possible. All of the period of the time allotted to the activity is in fact occupied by learners talk. This may seem obvious, but often most time is taken up with teacher talk or pauses. b. Participation is even. Classroom discussion is not determined by a minority of talkative participants; all get chance to speak and contributions are fairly evenly distributed. xxxiii c. Motivation is high Learners are eager to speak because they are interested in the topic and have something new to say about it, or because they want to contribute to achieving a task objective. d. language is of an acceptable level. Learners express themselves in utterances that are relevant, easily comprehensible to each other, and of an acceptable level of language accuracy. From the statements above, it can be concluded that someone owns a certain language speaking competence if heshe can produce oral language to participate in any kind of activity. Heshe can also respond the other ones’ speaking to maintain hisher social relationship. Besides, hisher language is acceptable and easily comprehensible at the level of language accuracy.

4. Macro and Micro-skill of Speaking

Brown 2003: 142-143 explains that a list of speaking skills can be drawn up for the purpose to serve as a taxonomy of skills from which we will select one or several that will become the objective of an assessment task. The micro-skills refer to producing the smaller chunks of language such as phonemes, morphemes, words, collocations, and phrasal units. The macro-skill implies the speaker’s focus on the larger elements: fluency, discourse, function, style, cohesion, nonverbal communication, and strategic option. The micro and macro- skills total roughly 16 objectives to assess in speaking are described as follows: a. Micro-skills xxxiv 1 Producing difference among English phonemes and allophonic variant. 2 Producing chunks of language of different length. 3 Producing English stress patterns, words in stressed position, rhythmic structure, and intonation contours. 4 Producing reduced forms of words and phrases. 5 Using an adequate number of lexical units words to accomplish pragmatic purposes. 6 Producing fluent speech at different rates of delivery. 7 Monitoring one’s own oral production and use various strategic devices- pauses, fillers, self-corrections, backtracking- to enhance the clarity of the message. 8 Using grammatical word classes nouns, verbs, etc, systems e.g. tense, agreement, pluralization, word order, pattern, rules, and elliptical forms. 9 Producing speech in natural constituents: in appropriate phrases, pause groups, breathe groups, and sentence constituents. 10 Expressing a particular meaning in different grammatical form. 11 Using cohesive devices in spoken discourse. b. Macro-skills 1 accomplishing appropriately communicative function according to situations, participants, and goals. 2 using appropriate styles, registers, implicative, redundancies, pragmatic conventions, convention rules, floor keeping and yielding, interrupting, xxxv and other sociolinguistic features in face-to-face conversations. 3 conveying links and connections between events and communicate such relations as focal and peripheral ideas, events, and feelings, new information and given information, generalization and exemplification. 4 conveying facial features, kinesics, body language, and other nonverbal cues along with verbal language. 5 developing and use a battery of speaking strategies, such as emphasizing key words, rephrasing, providing a context for interpreting the meaning of words, appealing for help, and accurately assessing how well your interlocutor is understanding you. As we consider designing tasks for assessing spoken language, these skills can act as a checklist of objectives. The macro-skill has the appearance of being more complex than the micro-skill; both contain ingredients of difficulty, depending on the stage and context of the test-taker.

5. Factors Influencing the Students’ Speaking Skill

There are some influential factors in developing the speaking skill. The factors that influence the speaking skill of the students are interest, motivation, and environment. The explanation of each factor is as follows: The first one is the students’ interest. The students’ interest to study and practice the speaking skill is an important factor. By having strong interest, the learners will try to give great attention to improve their speaking. They will xxxvi manage some activities that enable them to increase their skill. Besides, the desire to learn is strengthened Alexander, 1976: 17. Dealing with the above opinion, it is necessary to know that one of the causes of the failure in teaching English at school is that the teacher still teaches with the routine activities without considering that it will make the students bored, and lost their attention to the teaching and learning process. As the result, the students will not be able to catch the lesson easily because of their lost interest and participation, as stated by Douglas “Routine activities in learning can make the students bored. As the result, their motivation and participation in learning will decrease.” 1987: 48. Here, interest becomes a crucial factor in deciding on classroom practice for teaching the students. So, the teacher should apply the suitable teaching technique which enables to increase the students’ interest for learning in the classroom. In other word, the technique used by the teacher in teaching English to the students especially speaking skill should be able to create an interesting atmosphere so that the students will be able to be comfortable, enthusiastic, excited, and interested in joining the lesson in the teaching learning activity. The second one is the students’ motivation. Ur 1999: 274 states that various studies have found, that motivation is very strongly related to achievement in language learning. The abstract term ‘motivation’ on its own is rather difficult to define. It is easier and more useful to think in terms of the ‘motivated’ learner: one who is willing or even eager to invest effort in learning activities and to xxxvii progress. Learners’ motivation makes teaching and learning immeasurably easier and more pleasant, as well as more productive. Furthermore, Ur 1999: 275 says that the authors of a classic study of successful learning come to the conclusion that the most successful learners are not necessarily those to whom a language comes very easily; they are those who display certain typical characteristic, most of them clearly associated with motivation. Some of these are: first, the learner has positive task orientation. Heshe is willing to tackle tasks and challenges, and has confidence in his or her success. Second, the learner has ego involvement. Heshe finds it important to succeed in learning in order to maintain and promote hisher own self image. Then the learner also has a need for achievement. Heshe has a need to achieve, to overcome difficulties and succeed in what he or she ought to do. Next, the learner has high aspiration. Heshe is ambitious, goes for demanding challenges, high proficiencies, top grades. Fifth, the learner has goal orientation. Heshe is very aware of the goals of learning or of specific learning activities, and directs his or her efforts towards achieving them. While the sixth, the learner has perseverance. Heshe consciously invests a high level of effort in learning, and is not discouraged by setback or apparent lack of progress. Lastly, the learner has tolerance ambiguity. Heshe is not disturbed or frustrated by situation involving a temporary lack of understanding or confusion; heshe can live with these patiently, in the confidence that understanding will come later. Then, the third one is the students’ environment. Environment is an important factor in gaining the speaking skill. One of the reasons for his failure to xxxviii learn or maintain his second language is no contact between the learners and the community in which the language is spoken. The components of this factor can be home environment, school environment, community environment, etc. Based on the statements above, it can be concluded that the successful student depends on their interest, motivation, and environment surrounding them. It means that the students should motivate themselves to achieve English, although there are extrinsic factors influencing their study. However, the intrinsic interest and motivation has stronger influence than extrinsic ones.

6. Task Types of Speaking Activities

It has been admitted before that the students who study a language have a desire to speak a language. There are many activities which can support the speaking skill. It is stated by Yusnani Lubis in Suharno, 1998: 27 that there are fourteen types of communicative activities. But in this case, it would be explained four of them: retelling a story, role-play, dialogue and drama. a. Retelling story is an oral activity to retell a certain topic which is from a simple story that is easily to be kept remembers, either in reading or writing forms. b. Role-play is a sort act in language learning that the students should be asked to imagine themselves in a situation which could occur outside the classroom or they should be asked to adopt a specific role in his situation, even sometimes they should behave as if the situations are really exist, in accordance with their roles. xxxix c. Dialogue is a short conversation between two persons. It can be presented as language model in the manipulative phase of language learning. The learners in this case are grouped into pairs. The teacher’s role is to prepare the students linguistically for what they have to say and to provide props which serve as stimuli for conversation. In this case the learner is given a task to fill in a form which contains the information about his partner. In order to do this, each learner in turn must ask question and supply answer. As a final activity, random learners are asked to tell in narrative form. d. Drama is a more formalized form of role-play, with a preplanned story line and script. Sometimes small groups may prepare their own short dramatization of some even, writing the script and rehearsing the scene as a group. This may be more commonly referred to as a “skit”. Longer more involved dramatic performances have been shown to have positive effects on language learning, but they are time consuming and rarely can form part of a typical school curriculum. According to Scrivener 1994: 69, there are six types of drama activity which are commonly found in English language teaching classrooms: a. Role-play. Students act out small scenes using their own ideas or from ideas and information on role-cards. b. Simulation. This is really a large-scale role play. Role-cards are normally used and there is often background information as well. The intention is to create a much more complete, complex ‘world’, say of a business company, television studio, government body, etc. xl c. Drama games. Short games that usually involve movement and imagination. d. Guided improvisation. A scene is improvised. One by one the students join in character, until the whole scene and possibly story take on a life of their own. e. Acting play scripts. Short written sketches or scenes are acted by the students. f. Prepared improvised drama. Students in small groups invent and rehearse a short scene or story that they then perform for the others.

7. Testing Speaking

Speaking is a part of our daily activity that most of it takes the form of face to face dialog, so speaking involves interaction Thornburry, 1998: 8. In line with this, speaking test is different from the type of written test for it has specific features to apply. Weir 1998: 73 suggests that testing speaking should be built on a number of dynamic characteristics of actual communication such as unpredictable, in a realistic context, involving interaction, purposive, interesting and motivating; with positive washback effect on the material preceded test. There are many techniques to conduct oral or spoken test. The most commonly used spoken test types are suggested by Thornburry 2005: 124-125 as follows: a. Interviews xli An interview is conducted by calling out individuals one by one for their interviews. Interview is easy to set up but it is not conductive to test informal, conversational speaking style. The effect of interviewer, such as style of questioning is difficult to eliminate. b. Live monologue The candidates prepare and present a short talk on a pre-selected topic. This type of test eliminates the interviewer effect and provides evidence of the candidates’s ability to handle on extended turn, which is not always possible in interviews. Other students can be involved as audience in question and answer session so the speaker’s ability to speak interactively and spontaniously can be coped in the test. c. Recorded monologues Recorded monologue is less stressful than a more public performance. It is more practicable than life-monologue. Learners can record themselves on cetain topic talk. The assessment of recorded monologue can be done after the event, and the result can be triangulated. d. Role plays A learner must perform a certainrole in a classroom. Another role can be performed by another student or teacher. e. Collaborative tasks and discussions xlii These are similar to arole plays except that the learners are not required to assume a role but simply to be themselves. The learner’s interactive can be observed in circumstances that closely appoximate real-life language use. Thornburry 2005: 127 proposes two main ways of scoring in spoken test: holistic scoring and analytic scoring. In holistic scoring, a single score is given on the basis of overal scoring. In analytical scoring, a separate score is given for different aspects of the task. Holistic scoring is quicker to apply; it is adequate for informal testing of progress. Holistic scoring requires the involvement of more than one scorer. Analytic scoring is longer and it compels testers to take a variety of factors into account. However, the scorer may be distracted by all the categories and lose sight of the overall picture. In line with the describtion above, Madsen 1983: 167 states that holistic scoring is used to evaluate a wide variety of criteria simultaneously such as appropriateness, fluency, grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation. He states that the holistic scoring concentrates on communication while not overlooking the components of speech. In this type of scoring, the rating scale can be adapted for the use of teachers, and teachers can prepare their own scale Madsen, 1983: 169- 170. The scale is applied to achieve the consistency in scoring. Table 2.1 Criteria of Fluency proficiency by Madsen Score Indicator 21-25 Fluent communication 16-20 Good communcation 11-15 Satisfactory 6-10 Communication hesitant 0-5 Communication minimal xliii Table 2.2 Criteria of vocabulay proficiency by Madsen Score Indicator 21-25 Wholly appropriate 16-20 Few limmitation 11-15 Sometimes limited 6-10 Limitation affected the task 0-5 Inadequate for the task Table 2.3 Criteria of Grammar proficiency by Madsen Score Indicator 21-25 Clear and appropriate use of grammar 16-20 Few inaccurance grammar 11-15 Inaccuracy of grammar do not serously impede understanding 6-10 Inacuracy of grammar do not impede understanding 0-5 Inacuracy of grammar makes understanding almost impossible Table 2.4 Criteria of Pronunciation proficiency by Madsen Score Indicator 21-25 Clear pronunciation 16-20 Few inaccurate pronunciation 11-15 Inacuracy of pronunciation do not seriously impede understanding 6-10 Inaccuracy of pronunciation do not impede understanding 0-5 Inaccuracy of pronunciation makes understanding almost impossible Hughes 2003: 131-132 designs a scale to score speaking. In Hughes scale, the students are tested on comphrehension, fluency, grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation. They can get a maximum of ten scoring in each of these aspects. The scoring rubric by Hughes are as follows the more detail data can be seen in Table 3: Table 2.5 scoring rubric of speaking test by Hughes Pronunciation. Grammar Fluency Vocabulary. Comprehension. xliv 1-10 1-10 1-10 1-10 1-10 It is stated by Ur 1996: 34 that there are nine reasons for conducting a test. A test can be used as a means to: a. Give the teacher information about where the students are at the moment, to help to decide what to teach; b. Give the students information about what they know, so that they also have an awareness of what they need to learn or review; c. Asses for some purposes external to current teaching a final grade for the course, selection; d. Motivate students to learn or review specific materials; e. Get a noisy class to keep quiet and concentrate; f. Provide a clear indication that class has reached “station” in learning, such as the end of a unit, thus contributing a sense of structure in the course as a whole; g. Get students to make an effort in doing the test itself, which is likely to lead to better result and feeling of satisfaction; h. Give students task which themselves may actually provide useful review or practice, as well as testing; i. Provide students with a sense of achievement and progress in their learning. xlv Ur 1996: 135 designs a scale to score speaking test. In Ur scale, the students are tested on fluency and accuracy. They can get maximum of five in each of these aspects and ten points in all. Table 2. 6 Ur’s speaking test scale Accuracy Fluency Little or no language is produced. Poor vocabulary, mistakes in basic grammar, may have very strong foreign accent. Adequate but rich vocabulary, makes obvious grammar mistakes, slight foreign accent. 1 2 3 Little or no communication. Very hesitant and brief utterances, sometimes difficult to understand. Get idea across, but hesitaantly and briefly 1 2 3 Good range of vocabulary, occational grammar slips, slight foreign accent. Wide vocabulary appropriately used, virtually no grammar mistakes, native- like or slight foreign accent 4 5 Effective communication in short turn. Easy and effective communication, uses long turns, 4 5 Out of the speaking scales stated by Madsen, Hughes and Ur above, there are many other scales in assessing speaking performance. The ranges of scores and the kinds of skills included may be not the same. But, as a whole, what is evaluated in speaking test is ability of English such as pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension. Based on the language components which are evaluated in the research, the researcher decided to use Hughes’s speaking skill because these five aspects of speaking were completely stated.

B. The Nature of Acting Play Scripts Technique 1. The Meaning of Acting Play Scripts

According to Scrivener 1994: 69, APS is short written sketches or scenes which are acted out by the students in front of the class. It is an excellent way to xlvi get students to use the language. It essentially involves using the imagination to make oneself into another character, or the classroom into a different place. It can be a starting point for exciting listening and speaking work and it can be utilized as a tool to provide practice in specific grammatical, lexical, functional or phonological areas. Related to the theory above APS can improve the learners’ speaking skill in any situation, and help the learners to interact. As for the shy learners, APS help by providing a mask, where learners with the difficulty in conversation are liberated. In addition, it is fun and most learners will agree that enjoyment leads to better learning. Therefore, based on the above description, the writer believes that APS can give an appropriate contribution to solve the students’ English speaking problem.

2. The Reasons for Choosing Acting Play Scripts

APS is chosen as one of the tasks in the teaching activities to create the situation for learners to actively interact in the language, thereby making the learning language more meaningful. At the same time, the learners are introduced to the different styles-listening, remembering, discussing, writing, and presenting. The students are hoped to be able to improve and enhance their own ability in mastering of speaking competence in their daily life communicatively and actively. The following is the main reason stated by Scrivener 1994: 69 that bringing the outside world into the classroom in this way we can provide a lot of useful practice in cafes, shops, banks, streets, zoos, parties, etc. that would xlvii otherwise impossible. There can also be a freeing from the constraints of culture and expected behavior; this can be personally and linguistically very liberating. Curiously, it is sometimes the shyest students who are most able to seize the potential. Next, some people are learning English to prepare for specific roles in their lives: people who are going to work or travel in an international context. It is helpful for these students to have tried out and experimented with the language they will require in the friendly and safe environment of a classroom. For these students, APS is very useful dress rehearsal for real life. It enables them not only to acquire set phrases, but also to learn how interaction might take place in variety of situations. Furthermore, APS helps shy students by providing them with a mask. Some more shy members of a group may have a great deal of difficulty participating in conversation about themselves, and in other activities based on their direct experience. These students are deliberated by APS as they no longer feel that their own personality is involved. The most important reason for using APS is that it is fun and motivating. Quieter students get the chance to express themselves in a more open. The world of the classroom is broadened to include the outside world – thus offering a much wider range of language opportunities. Lastly, the real situations can be created and the students can take the benefits from the practice. 3. The Steps to Run an APS Technique. xlviii According to Scrivener 2004: 70, APS technique provides the possibility of practicing a lot of vocabularies in a useful and interesting way. There is also scope for use of functional language like: apologizing, refusing, offering help, asking for opinion, agreeing disagreeing, denying, praising, congratulating, etc. That is why; he gives some guidelines to run this technique. The steps are as follows: a. Make sure that the students understand the idea of APS. The teachers should explain to the students that they know what is going to happen, what should they do and whether they are comfortable to do that or not. b. Make sure that the situation is clear. c. Allow the students to write the scripts in the right structure, let them open the dictionary to find the proper words, and also give time to memorize the scripts. d. Give them time to prepare their ideas before the speaking starts e. And at last, when the activity of speaking starts, encourage the students to improve rather than rely on prepared scripts. This condition will make them more relax and could create a natural situation in class. 4. Teacher’s Role in Acting Play Scripts It is stated by Brown 2001: 167-168 that there is a spectrum of possibilities of teacher’s roles which are more conducive to creating on interactive classroom. xlix a. The teacher as controller In this role, teacher is a “master” controller, always in charge of every moment in the classroom. Master controller determines what the students do, when they should speak, and what language forms they should use. A teacher can often predict many students’ responses because everything is mapped out ahead of time. b. The teacher is the director The teacher is like a conductor of an orchestra so the teacher’s job is to keep the process flowing smoothly and efficiently. c. The teacher as manager The teacher is as one who plans lessons, modules, and courses and who structures the larger, longer segments of classroom time. d. The teacher as facilitator A less directive role might be described as facilitating the process of learning, of making learning easier for students. The facilitator capitalizes on the principle of intrinsic motivation by allowing students to discover language through using it pragmatically, rather than by telling them about language. e. The teacher as resource l In this role, the teacher is available for advice and counsel when they look for it.

C. Related Research

The research which will be done in SMP Negeri 1 Kalitidu is related to the previous research done by Anis Dian SMA Negeri 2 Bojonegoro and Suharno from SMP Negeri 1 Wonogiri. Both of the researchers conducted this research in improving students’ speaking skill through Role Play and Small Group Work. It is clear that Role Play and Small Group Work problem solving in decision making belong to communication activities. 1. The research done by Anis Dian Hartini, entitled “Improving Speaking Performance of the Second Year Students at SMA Negeri 2 Bojonegoro Trough Small Group Work”. In the year 2007, proved that Small Group Work is effective to: 1 Increase the number of students who activity involved in the speaking activity; 2 Increase students’ confidence and self- initiatives to use English for their oral communication. The students make a progress or improvement in some aspects of language components, mainly Grammar, vocabulary, fluency, comprehensibility, and pronunciation; 3 to create a good and natural class atmosphere; 4 to create a cooperative situation among students; and 5 to provide students ample opportunities to practice their English orally in more natural and interactive situation. 2. The research done by Suharno, entitled “Improving students’ English Speaking Using Role Play” in the year 2007, proved that Role Play is effectively increase students’ motivation and interest to study English li especially English Speaking. The use of Role Play improved and enhanced the students’ speaking competence. And the last, the use of Role Play teaching technique really improves the students’ achievement in Learning English especially in English Speaking. Moreover, Kemmis states that classroom action research is a concept of doing X to improve Y. It is held because there is one or more problems found in something or because the belief that the condition of something is not good and needs improvement Ngadiso in Siti Zulaihah, 2007: 3. In this case Acting Play Scripts is the X variable while speaking skill is the Y variable. The researcher will apply APS technique to improve students’ speaking skill. The researcher will record all the students’ activities regarding their attitude, respond and progress in speaking skill. The research will be implemented in the form of collaborative action research by inviting one of the English teachers in SMP Negeri 1 Kalitidu. This research will be done in four steps of planning, acting, observing, and reflecting.

D. Teaching Speaking Using Acting Play Script Technique